


Two Blackbirds

by sinuous_curve



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Community: kink_bingo, Dubious Consent, M/M, hypnosis/mind control
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-14
Updated: 2012-07-14
Packaged: 2017-11-09 22:15:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/459060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sinuous_curve/pseuds/sinuous_curve
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You are thinking something,” Loki says, smiling thinly. “Tell me what it is.” Of course, Barton does not think anything that Loki has not put into his head. The question is liked the honed edge of a knife in the room, slitting Barton’s mind into neat pieces to be arrayed, consumed, and discarded.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Blackbirds

**Author's Note:**

> My deepest thanks to amanuensis for a wonderful beta, and the encouragement to go to a darker place than I usually would.

Barton is a soldier. 

He holds himself as one, standing in front of Loki with his hands clasped behind his back and his chin raised. Loki aches from his _conversation_ with his benefactor -- his death-obsessed patron speaking through the mouth of a whining, puling puppet with no sense of his expendability. He sits on the pale, Midgardian imitation of a throne, and looks at Barton.

Loki said he had heart, and meant it. A very human heart, beating beneath his fragile ribs while the tesseract glows prettily in his very human eyes. 

“You are thinking something,” Loki says, smiling thinly. “Tell me what it is.” Of course, Barton does not think anything that Loki has not put into his head. The question is liked the honed edge of a knife in the room, slitting Barton’s mind into neat pieces to be arrayed, consumed, and discarded.

Heart is not enough, after all. Not for Loki, not now. He requires a certain usefulness. 

“I think there’s another party involved that you haven’t told me about,” Barton says, and his eyes do not waver from their front-forward gaze. 

Loki cocks his head.

He is surprised at the answer, almost pleased. Though Barton must tread very carefully in his next words to avoid a deserved reproval. Good little soldiers do not, even tacitly, question the actions of their betters. It is the possessive that intrigues Loki; the me, in place of us, as though Barton does not particularly _care_ what the rest of the crawling ants with pretty blue eyes know.

“And if there is?” Loki asks, touching two fingers to his temple where pain still throbs like a healing burn. “Do you question my choices?”

Barton’s face flickers with emotion. “It’s my job to protect you,” he says, which is and is not an answer. 

Loki is somewhat delighted at words. 

Humans are filthy, crawling creatures, consumed with their own production and excretion, their constant animal reproduction and blind faithless wailing in the dark to gods who do not exist.

And yet, Loki cannot help but feel some jealous possession over those imbued with his own chaos. Defiance is written in Barton as deeply as his bones; Loki can imagine peeling back flesh and sinew and muscle and finding his own spells whittled into the bright white of his fragile human skeleton. 

“It is your job, because I have made it so,” Loki says. “Trust me.”

The last two words make the air shudder, and Barton’s mouth slips open just a little. It is a particular irony that on this world, this ragged little excuse for a realm, Loki is the most powerful thing most of them will ever see. And yet only half as powerful as he can be. It is not for nothing that he is Chaos and Tricks and Mischief; he is their raw, throbbing, unfettered, elemental power, constant as the stars. 

Loki considers Barton, his shifting blue eyes suddenly wider. 

“Do you trust me?” Loki asks. 

“Yes,” Barton answers. “I trust you.”

Loki laughs, because in chaos there is truth and lie, and what no one but him will ever understand about the tesseract is that it does not make one lie or act contrary to themself. It changes who the self is, such that action and word are true. Loki has plans beneath and between plans, but feels a special affection for the tesseract and its chaos. 

He stands with a show of ease for no one’s benefit but his own, as though force of will can slough the twice damned chitauri mouthpiece from his limbs. 

Barton stands still, shoulders pushed back into what Loki assumes is his approximation of a soldier’s stance. It is more contained than the aggression of Asgardian warriors, helms and weapons raised to push and invade. He stands as though expecting the need to defend himself. 

“There is another,” Loki says mildly, crossing the grit and rubble-strewn floor to stand in front of Barton. He is not merely small, but small for a grown human. “But you will ask no more question unless you think you have the stomach to accept the consequences of an answer.”

Barton looks up at him. “I understand,” he says. 

Humans are worthless for anything but worship, and rule. 

What Thor does not understand, what the Chitauri do not understand is that Loki’s ambition is not so petty that the subjugation of the easily cowed is what he seeks. That is an insult to his history of planning for the longer game. Midgard is not a prize, it is a long-discarded backwood populated by animals stupid enough to worship what they could not explain. 

Humans are, at best, a plague that wails as it eats itself alive. They are so essentially unworthy of anything but rule. 

With a very, very few exceptions. 

Loki reaches out with slow deliberation and curls his hand around Barton’s chin. “How hard have you fought to become what you are, little bird?” 

Barton looks at him, and beneath the sheen of blue his eyes are still there. Almost quick, much like the compact cut of his body is almost strong. Loki has no interest in the lost souls his brother gathers around who believe their freakishness is laudable. They are so many poor imitations of their betters. Wearing a suit, replace blood with potions, and letting loose the monster instead does not change their filthy humanity. They abase themselves in the effort to be better _men_. 

He is interested only in the humans who have, if inevitably unsuccessfully, attempted to mold themselves into something _more_. 

Loki brushes his thumb over Barton’s wanton, pretty little mouth. Useful mouth. 

Barton’s silence stretches, and Loki slaps him with enough force to rock his frame. “I asked a question.”

“Hard,” Barton says, straightening with a red mark beginning to blossom on his cheek. “Very hard.”

Loki smiles wryly. “So effusive.”

The true test of the tesseract, and the staff, is not whether or not one can wield it to bend others to their will. A child or an animal could lay their hands on it and do as much. For that, the holder is not more than a conduit through which the tesseract acts.

The test is what one does with what he gains. 

The temptations are, in fact, quite terrible, Loki thinks. Dangerous, as well. Irresponsible. 

But then, Loki has never been a paragon of that particular kind of wisdom. And, ah, it is worse when his own are near him, goading him. The stubborn line of Barton’s mouth is a challenge murmured in Loki’s ear.

He laughs. “When must you leave?” he asks. 

“An hour,” Barton says. 

Loki turns and walks back to his contemptible Midgardian throne. “When this is over,” he says, lowering himself down, “this other party will need to be dealt with. Would you stand at my right hand, if you proved yourself worthy?” He leans back, and skims his eyes along the line of BArton’s body. “And I asked?”

Once again, Barton’s face flickers with a depth of escaped emotion that is almost intoxicating to Loki. The defiant ones are always chaotic in their hearts. “I would,” Barton says.

“We shall see.” Loki extends his hand and crooks two fingers. “Now, come here and make yourself useful for the next hour.”


End file.
